Nkrumah, Kwame (1909-1972) - Biography

Kwame Nkrumah became the first prime and later president of Ghana. He was

born on September 21, 1909, at Nkroful in what was then the British-ruled Gold

Coast, the son of a goldsmith. Trained as a teacher, he went to the United States

in 1935 for advanced studies and continued his schooling in England, where he

helped organize the Pan-African Congress in 1945. He returned to Ghana in 1947

and became general secretary of the newly founded United Gold Coast

Convention but split from it in 1949 to form the Convention People's party (CPP).

After his 'positive action' campaign created disturbances in 1950, Nkrumah was

jailed, but when the CPP swept the 1951 elections, he was freed to form a

government, and he led the colony to independence as Ghana in 1957. A firm

believer in African liberation, Nkrumah pursued a radical pan-African policy,

playing a key role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963.

As head of government, he was less successful however, and as time passed he

was accused of forming a dictatorship. In 1964 he formed a one-party state, with

himself as president for life, and was accused of actively promoting a cult of his

own personality. Overthrown by the military in 1966, with the help of western

backing, he spent his last years in exile, dying in Bucharest, Romania, on April

27, 1972. His legacy and dream of a "United States of African" still remains a

goal among many.

Nkrumah was the motivating force behind the movement for independence of

Ghana, then British West Africa, and its first president when it became

independent in 1957. His 1965 work Neocolonialism, the last stage of

imperialism, shares with Che Guevara the credit for introducing the concept of

“neocolonialism.”

Further Reading:

Neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism, 1965

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah [external link].

Kwame Nkrumah 1965

Neo-Colonialism,the Last Stage of

imperialism

Source: Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of

Imperialism;

First Published: in 1965 by Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., London.

Published in the USA by International Publishers Co., Inc., 1966;

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialismKwame Nkrumah 1965

IntroductionTHE neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its

most dangerous stage. In the past it was possible to convert a country upon which

a neo-colonial regime had been imposed — Egypt in the nineteenth century is an

example — into a colonial territory. Today this process is no longer feasible. Old-

fashioned colonialism is by no means entirely abolished. It still constitutes an

African problem, but it is everywhere on the retreat. Once a territory has become

nominally independent it is no longer possible, as it was in the last century, to

reverse the process. Existing colonies may linger on, but no new colonies will be

created. In place of colonialism as the main instrument of imperialism we have

today neo-colonialism.

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in

theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international

sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed

from outside.

The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. For example,

in an extreme case the troops of the imperial power may garrison the territory of

the neo-colonial State and control the government of it. More often, however,

neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. The

neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the

imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control

over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments

towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in

positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign

exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial

power.

Where neo-colonialism exists the power exercising control is often the State

which formerly ruled the territory in question, but this is not necessarily so. For

example, in the case of South Vietnam the former imperial power was France, but

neo-colonial control of the State has now gone to the United States. It is possible

that neo-colonial control may be exercised by a consortium of financial interests

which are not specifically identifiable with any particular State. The control of the

Congo by great international financial concerns is a case in point.

The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation

rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world.

Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap

between the rich and the poor countries of the world.

The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of

the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at

preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a

way as to impoverish the less developed.

Non-alignment, as practised by Ghana and many other countries, is based on

co-operation with all States whether they be capitalist, socialist or have a mixed

economy. Such a policy, therefore, involves foreign investment from capitalist

countries, but it must be invested in accordance with a national plan drawn up by

the government of the non-aligned State with its own interests in mind. The issue

is not what return the foreign investor receives on his investments. He may, in

fact, do better for himself if he invests in a non-aligned country than if he invests

in a neo-colonial one. The question is one of power. A State in the grip of neo-

colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-

colonialism such a serious threat to world peace. The growth of nuclear weapons

has made out of date the old-fashioned balance of power which rested upon the

ultimate sanction of a major war. Certainty of mutual mass destruction effectively

prevents either of the great power blocs from threatening the other with the

possibility of a world-wide war, and military conflict has thus become confined to

‘limited wars’. For these neo-colonialism is the breeding ground.

Such wars can, of course, take place in countries which are not neo-colonialist

controlled. Indeed their object may be to establish in a small but independent

country a neo-colonialist regime. The evil of neo-colonialism is that it prevents

the formation of those large units which would make impossible ‘limited war’. To

give one example: if Africa was united, no major power bloc would attempt to

subdue it by limited war because from the very nature of limited war, what can be

achieved by it is itself limited. It is, only where small States exist that it is

possible, by landing a few thousand marines or by financing a mercenary force, to

secure a decisive result.

The restriction of military action of ‘limited wars’ is, however, no guarantee of

world peace and is likely to be the factor which will ultimately involve the great

power blocs in a world war, however much both are determined to avoid it.

Limited war, once embarked upon, achieves a momentum of its own. Of this,

the war in South Vietnam is only one example. It escalates despite the desire of

the great power blocs to keep it limited. While this particular war may be

prevented from leading to a world conflict, the multiplication of similar limited

wars can only have one end-world war and the terrible consequences of nuclear

conflict.

Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise

it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it

means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the

imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was

taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at

least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-

colonialism neither is the case.

Above all, neo-colonialism, like colonialism before it, postpones the facing of

the social issues which will have to be faced by the fully developed sector of the

world before the danger of world war can be eliminated or the problem of world

poverty resolved.

Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of

the capitalist countries. The temporary success of this policy can be seen in the

ever widening gap between the richer and the poorer nations of the world. But the

internal contradictions and conflicts of neo-colonialism make it certain that it

cannot endure as a permanent world policy. How it should be brought to an end is

a problem that should be studied, above all, by the developed nations of the

world, because it is they who will feel the full impact of the ultimate failure. The

longer it continues the more certain it is that its inevitable collapse will destroy

the social system of which they have made it a foundation.

The reason for its development in the post-war period can be briefly

summarised. The problem which faced the wealthy nations of the world at the end

of the second world war was the impossibility of returning to the pre-war

situation in which there was a great gulf between the few rich and the many poor.

Irrespective of what particular political party was in power, the internal pressures

in the rich countries of the world were such that no post-war capitalist country

could survive unless it became a ‘Welfare State’. There might be differences in

degree in the extent of the social benefits given to the industrial and agricultural

workers, but what was everywhere impossible was a return to the mass

unemployment and to the low level of living of the pre-war years.

From the end of the nineteenth century onwards, colonies had been regarded as

a source of wealth which could be used to mitigate the class conflicts in the

capitalist States and, as will be explained later, this policy had some success. But

it failed in ‘its ultimate object because the pre-war capitalist States were so

organised internally that the bulk of the profit made from colonial possessions

found its way into the pockets of the capitalist class and not into those of the

workers. Far from achieving the object intended, the working-class parties at

times tended to identify their interests with those of the colonial peoples and the

imperialist powers found themselves engaged upon a conflict on two fronts, at

home with their own workers and abroad against the growing forces of colonial

liberation.

The post-war period inaugurated a very different colonial policy. A deliberate

attempt was made to divert colonial earnings from the wealthy class and use them

instead generally to finance the ‘Welfare State’. As will be seen from the

examples given later, this was the method consciously adopted even by those

working-class leaders who had before the war regarded the colonial peoples as

their natural allies against their capitalist enemies at home.

At first it was presumed that this object could be achieved by maintaining the

pre-war colonial system. Experience soon proved that attempts to do so would be

disastrous and would only provoke colonial wars, thus dissipating the anticipated

gains from the continuance of the colonial regime. Britain, in particular, realised

this at an early stage and the correctness of the British judgement at the time has

subsequently been demonstrated by the defeat of French colonialism in the Far

East and Algeria and the failure of the Dutch to retain any of their former colonial

empire.

The system of neo-colonialism was therefore instituted and in the short run it

has served the developed powers admirably. It is in the long run that its

consequences are likely to be catastrophic for them.

Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united

colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable

of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for

defence and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are

linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler.

At first sight the scheme would appear to have many advantages for the

developed countries of the world. All the profits of neo-colonialism can be

secured if, in any given area, a reasonable proportion of the States have a neo-

colonialist system. It is not necessary that they all should have one. Unless small

States can combine they must be compelled to sell their primary products at

prices dictated by the developed nations and buy their manufactured goods at the

prices fixed by them. So long as neo-colonialism can prevent political and

economic conditions for optimum development, the developing countries,

whether they are under neo-colonialist control or not, will be unable to create a

large enough market to support industrialisation. In the same way they will lack

the financial strength to force the developed countries to accept their primary

products at a fair price.

In the neo-colonialist territories, since the former colonial power has in theory

relinquished political control, if the social conditions occasioned by neo-

colonialism cause a revolt the local neo-colonialist government can be sacrificed

and another equally subservient one substituted in its place. On the other hand, in

any continent where neo-colonialism exists on a wide scale the same social

pressures which can produce revolts in neo-colonial territories will also affect

those States which have refused to accept the system and therefore neo-colonialist

nations have a ready-made weapon with which they can threaten their opponents

if they appear successfully to be challenging the system.

These advantages, which seem at first sight so obvious, are, however, on

examination, illusory because they fail to take into consideration the facts of the

world today.

The introduction of neo-colonialism increases the rivalry between the great

powers which was provoked by the old-style colonialism. However little real

power the government of a neo-colonialist State may possess, it must have, from

the very fact of its nominal independence, a certain area of manoeuvre. It may not

be able to exist without a neo-colonialist master but it may still have the ability to

change masters.

The ideal neo-colonialist State would be one which was wholly subservient to

neo-colonialist interests but the existence of the socialist nations makes it

impossible to enforce the full rigour of the neo-colonialist system. The existence

of an alternative system is itself a challenge to the neo-colonialist regime.

Warnings about ‘the dangers of Communist subversion are likely to be two-edged

since they bring to the notice of those living under a neo-colonialist system the

possibility of a change of regime. In fact neo-colonialism is the victim of its own

contradictions. In order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practised it

must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic

object of neo-colonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of

the developed countries. It is only when this contradiction is understood that the

failure of innumerable ‘aid’ programmes, many of them well intentioned, can be

explained.

In the first place, the rulers of neo-colonial States derive their authority to

govern, not from the will of the people, but from the support which they obtain

from their neo-colonialist masters. They have therefore little interest in

developing education, strengthening the bargaining power of their workers

employed by expatriate firms, or indeed of taking any step which would

challenge the colonial pattern of commerce and industry, which it is the object of

neo-colonialism to preserve. ‘Aid’, therefore, to a neo-colonial State is merely a

revolving credit, paid by the neo-colonial master, passing through the neo-

colonial State and returning to the neo-colonial master in the form of increased

profits.

Secondly, it is in the field of ‘aid’ that the rivalry of individual developed

States first manifests itself. So long as neo-colonialism persists so long will

spheres of interest persist, and this makes multilateral aid — which is in fact the

only effective form of aid — impossible.

Once multilateral aid begins the neo-colonialist masters are f aced by the

hostility of the vested interests in their own country. Their manufacturers

naturally object to any attempt to raise the price of the raw materials which they

obtain from the neo-colonialist territory in question, or to the establishment there

of manufacturing industries which might compete directly or indirectly with their

own exports to the territory. Even education is suspect as likely to produce a

student movement and it is, of course, true that in many less developed countries

the students have been in the vanguard of the fight against neo-colonialism.

In the end the situation arises that the only type of aid which the neo-colonialist

masters consider as safe is ‘military aid’.

Once a neo-colonialist territory is brought to such a state of economic chaos

and misery that revolt actually breaks out then, and only then, is there no limit to

the generosity of the neo-colonial overlord, provided, of course, that the funds

supplied are utilised exclusively for military purposes.

Military aid in fact marks the last stage of neo-colonialism and its effect is self-

destructive. Sooner or later the weapons supplied pass into the hands of the

opponents of the neo-colonialist regime and the war itself increases the social

misery which originally provoked it.

Neo-colonialism is a mill-stone around the necks of the developed countries

which practise it. Unless they can rid themselves of it, it will drown them.

Previously the developed powers could escape from the contradictions of neo-

colonialism by substituting for it direct colonialism. Such a solution is no longer

possible and the reasons for it have been well explained by Mr Owen Lattimore,

the United States Far Eastern expert and adviser to Chiang Kai-shek in the

immediate post-war period. He wrote:

‘Asia, which was so easily and swiftly subjugated by conquerors in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, displayed an amazing ability stubbornly to

resist modern armies equipped with aeroplanes, tanks, motor vehicles and

mobile artillery.

‘Formerly big territories were conquered in Asia with small forces. Income,

first of all from plunder, then from direct taxes and lastly from trade, capital

investments and long-term exploitation, covered with incredible speed the

expenditure for military operations. This arithmetic represented a great

temptation to strong countries. Now they have run up against another

arithmetic, and it discourages them.’

The same arithmetic is likely to apply throughout the less developed world.

This book is therefore an attempt to examine neo-colonialism not only in its

African context and its relation to African unity, but in world perspective. Neo-

colonialism is by no means exclusively an African question. Long before it was

practised on any large scale in Africa it was an established system in other parts

of the world. Nowhere has it proved successful, either in raising living standards

or in ultimately benefiting countries which have indulged in it.

Marx predicted that the growing gap between the wealth of the possessing

classes and the workers it employs would ultimately produce a conflict fatal to

capitalism in each individual capitalist State.

This conflict between the rich and the poor has now been transferred on to the

international scene, but for proof of what is acknowledged to be happening it is

no longer necessary to consult the classical Marxist writers. The situation is set

out with the utmost clarity in the leading organs of capitalist opinion. Take for

example the following extracts from The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper

which perhaps best reflects United States capitalist thinking.

In its issue of 12 May 1965, under the headline of ‘Poor Nations’ Plight’, the

paper first analyses ‘which countries are considered industrial and which

backward’. There is, it explains, ‘no rigid method of classification’. Nevertheless,

it points out:

‘A generally used breakdown, however, has recently been maintained by the

International Monetary Fund because, in the words of an IMF official, “the

economic demarcation in the world is getting increasingly apparent.”’ The

break-down, the official says, “is based on simple common sense.”’

In the IMF’s view, the industrial countries are the United States, the United

Kingdom, most West European nations, Canada and Japan. A special category

called “other developed areas” includes such other European lands as Finland,

Greece and Ireland, plus Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The IMF’s

“less developed” category embraces all of Latin America and nearly all of the

Middle East, non-Communist Asia and Africa.’

In other words the ‘backward’ countries are those situated in the neo-colonial

areas.

After quoting figures to support its argument, The Wall Street Journal

comments on this situation:

‘The industrial nations have added nearly $2 billion to their reserves, which

now approximate $52 billion. At the same time, the reserves of the less-

developed group not only have stopped rising, but have declined some $200

million. To analysts such as Britain’s Miss Ward, the significance of such

statistics is clear: the economic gap is rapidly widening “between a white,

complacent, highly bourgeois, very wealthy, very small North Atlantic elite and

everybody else, and this is not a very comfortable heritage to leave to one’s

children.”

“Everybody else” includes approximately two-thirds of the population of the

earth, spread through about 100 nations.’

This is no new problem. In the opening paragraph of his book, The War on

World Poverty, written in 1953, the present British Labour leader, Mr Harold

Wilson, summarised the major problem of the world as he then saw it:

‘For the vast majority of mankind the most urgent problem is not war, or

Communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 1,500,000,000

people, some-thing like two-thirds of the world’s population, are living in

conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease.

This hunger is at the same time the effect and the cause of the poverty, squalor

and misery in which they live.’

Its consequences are likewise understood. The correspondent of The Wall

Street Journal previously quoted, underlines them:

‘... many diplomats and economists view the implications as overwhelmingly

— and dangerously — political. Unless the present decline can be reversed,

these analysts fear, the United States and other wealthy industrial powers of the

West face the distinct possibility, in the words of British economist Barbara

Ward, “of a sort of international class war”.’

What is lacking are any positive proposals for dealing with the situation. All

that The Wall Street Journal’s correspondent can do is to point out that the

traditional methods recommended for curing the evils are only likely to make the

situation worse.

It has been argued that the developed nations should effectively assist the

poorer parts of the world, and that the whole world should be turned into a

Welfare State. However, there seems little prospect that anything of this sort

could be achieved. The so-called ‘aid’ programmes to help backward economies

represent, according to a rough U.N. estimate, only one half of one per cent of the

total income of industrial countries. But when it comes to the prospect of

increasing such aid the mood is one of pessimism:

‘A large school of thought holds that expanded share-the-wealth schemes are

idealistic and impractical. This school contends climate, undeveloped human

skills, lack of natural resources and other factors — not just lack of money —

retard economic progress in many of these lands, and that the countries lack

personnel with the training or will to use vastly expanded aid effectively. Share-

the-wealth schemes, according to this view, would be like pouring money down

a bottomless well, weakening the donor nations without effectively curing the

ills of the recipients.’

The absurdity of this argument is demonstrated by the fact that every one of the

reasons quoted to prove why the less developed parts of the world cannot be

developed applied equally strongly to the present developed countries in the

period prior to their development. The argument is only true in this sense. The

less developed world will not become developed through the goodwill or

generosity of the developed powers. It can only become developed through a

struggle against the external forces which have a vested interest in keeping it

undeveloped.

Of these forces, neo-colonialism is, at this stage of history, the principal.

I propose to analyse neo-colonialism, first, by examining the state of the

African continent and showing how neo-colonialism at the moment keeps it

artificially poor. Next, I propose to show how in practice African Unity, which in

itself can only be established by the defeat of neo-colonialism, could immensely

raise African living standards. From this beginning, I propose to examine neo-

colonialism generally, first historically and then by a consideration of the great

international monopolies whose continued stranglehold on the neo-colonial

sectors of the world ensures the continuation of the system.

 

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialismKwame Nkrumah 1965

The mechanisms of neo-colonialism

IN order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is

necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in

whatever guise it may appear. For the methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and

varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political,

religious, ideological and cultural spheres.

Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the

Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a

qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated

expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its

former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of

such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives

formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern

attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about

‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.

Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long

exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards

Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of

that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and

touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy,

evidence of which can be seen all around the world.

Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain,

Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ‘defecting’ from U.S. monopoly control,

what interpretation can be placed on his ‘experiments’ in the Sahara desert, his

paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America?

Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street

octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a

phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s

connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services. I quote:

‘The Invisible Government ... is a loose amorphous grouping of individuals and

agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to

the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it

confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the

intelligence community: the National Security Council, the Defense

Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy

Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal

Bureau of Investigation.

‘The Invisible Government includes also many other units and agencies, as well

as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional

government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are

seemingly private.

‘To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is

shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. An informed citizen might come

to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in

one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite

direction.

‘This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came into being as

a result of two related factors: the rise of the United States after World War II to

a position of pre-eminent world power, and the challenge to that power by

Soviet Communism...

‘By 1964 the intelligence network had grown into a massive hidden apparatus,

secretly employing about 200,000 persons and spending billions of dollars a

year. [The Invisible Government, David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, Random

House, New York, 1964.]

Here, from the very citadel of neo-colonialism, is a description of the apparatus

which now directs all other Western intelligence set-ups either by persuasion or

by force. Results were achieved in Algeria during the April 1961 plot of anti-de

Gaulle generals; as also in Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Suez and the famous U-2 spy

intrusion of Soviet air space which wrecked the approaching Summit, then in

West Germany and again in East Germany in the riots of 1953, in Hungary’s

abortive crisis of 1959, Poland’s of September 1956, and in Korea, Burma,

Formosa, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam; they are evident in the trouble in

Congo (Leopoldville) which began with Lumumba’s murder, and continues till

now; in events in Cuba, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and in other places too

numerous to catalogue completely.

And with what aim have these innumerable incidents occurred? The general

objective has been mentioned: to achieve colonialism in fact while preaching

independence.

On the economic front, a strong factor favouring Western monopolies and

acting against the developing world is inter-national capital’s control of the world

market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951

to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for

primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose

3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent).

In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American

countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same

period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in

foreign exchange from such exports decreased.

Another technique of neo-colonialism is the use of high rates of interest.

Figures from the World Bank for 1962 showed that seventy-one Asian, African

and Latin American countries owed foreign debts of some $27,000 million, on

which they paid in interest and service charges some $5,000 million. Since then,

such foreign debts have been estimated as more than £30,000 million in these

areas. In 1961, the interest rates on almost three-quarters of the loans offered by

the major imperialist powers amounted to more than five per cent, in some cases

up to seven or eight per cent, while the call-in periods of such loans have been

burdensomely short.

While capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six developing

countries between 1956 and 1962, ‘it is estimated that interest and profit alone

extracted on this sum from the debtor countries amounted to more than £15,000

million. This method of penetration by economic aid recently soared into

prominence when a number of countries began rejecting it. Ceylon, Indonesia and

Cambodia are among those who turned it down. Such ‘aid’ is estimated on the

annual average to have amounted to $2,600 million between 1951 and 1955;

$4,007 million between 1956 and 1959, and $6,000 million between 1960 and

1962. But the average sums taken out of the aided countries by such donors in a

sample year, 1961, are estimated to amount to $5,000 million in profits, $1,000

million in interest, and $5,800 million from non-equivalent exchange, or a total of

$11,800 million extracted against $6,000 million put in. Thus, ‘aid’ turns out to

be another means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a

more cosmetic name.

Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to be known

as ‘multilateral aid’ through international organisations: the International

Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction and Development

(known as the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation and the

International Development Association are examples, all, significantly, having

U.S. capital as their major backing. These agencies have the habit of forcing

would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying

information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by

the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans. As for the

alleged development, between 1960 and mid-1963 the International Development

Association promised a total of $500 million to applicants, out of which only $70

million were actually received.

In more recent years, as pointed out by Monitor in The Times, 1 July 1965,

there has been a substantial increase in communist technical and economic aid

activities in developing countries. During 1964 the total amount of assistance

offered was approximately £600 million. This was almost a third of the total

communist aid given during the previous decade. The Middle East received about

40 per cent of the total, Asia 36 per cent, Africa 22 per cent and Latin America

the rest.

Increased Chinese activity was responsible to some extent for the larger

amount of aid offered in 1964, though China contributed only a quarter of the

total aid committed; the Soviet Union provided a half, and the East European

countries a quarter.

Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that offered from the

west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates

on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per

cent charged on loans from western countries.

Nor is the whole story of ‘aid’ contained in figures, for there are conditions

which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties;

agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances,

including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favour of the

donor country’s goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments;

determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up

counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds a

majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply

to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others

which are political and military.

So-called ‘invisible trade’ furnishes the Western monopolies with yet another

means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean shipping is

controlled by me imperialist countries. They control shipping rates and, between

1951 and 1961, they increased them some five times in a total rise of about 60 per

cent, the upward trend continuing. Thus, net annual freight expenses incurred by

Asia, Africa and Latin America amount to no less than an estimated $1,600

million. This is over and above all other profits and interest payments. As for

insurance payments, in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavourable balance in

Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 million.

Having waded through all this, however, we have begun to understand only the

basic methods of neo-colonialism. The full extent of its inventiveness is far from

exhausted.

In the labour field, for example, imperialism operates through labour arms like

the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British Labour Party, and

through such instruments as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

(ICFTU), now apparently being superseded by the New York Africa-American

Labour Centre (AALC) under AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known

CIA man in labour’s top echelons, Irving Brown.

In 1945, out of the euphoria of anti-fascist victory, the World Federation of

Trade Unions (WFTU) had been formed, including all world labour except the

U.S. American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1949, however, led by the British

Trade Union Congress (TUC), a number of pro-imperialist labour bodies in the

West broke away from the WFTU over the issue of anti-colonialist liberation, and

set up the ICFTU.

For ten years it continued under British TUC leadership. Its record in Africa,

Asia and Latin America could gratify only the big international monopolies

which were extracting super-profits from those areas.

In 1959, at Brussels, the United States AFL-CIO union centre fought for and

won control of the ICFTU Executive Board. From then on a flood of typewriters,

mimeograph machines, cars, supplies, buildings, salaries and, so it is still averred,

outright bribes for labour leaders in various parts of the developing world rapidly

linked ICFTU in the minds of the rank and file with the CIA. To such an extent

did its prestige suffer under these American bosses that, in 1964, the AFL-CIO

brains felt it necessary to establish a fresh outfit. They set up the AALC in New

York right across the river from the United Nations.

‘As a steadfast champion of national independence, democracy and social

justice’, unblushingly stated the April 1965 Bulletin put out by this Centre, ‘the

AFL-CIO will strengthen its efforts to assist the advancement of the economic

conditions of the African peoples. Toward this end, steps have been taken to

expand assistance to the African free trade unions by organising the African-

American Labour Centre. Such assistance will help African labour play a vital

role in the economic and democratic upbuilding of their countries.'

The March issue of this Bulletin, however, gave the game away: ‘In mobilising

capital resources for investment in Workers Education, Vocational Training, Co-

operatives, Health Clinics and Housing, the Centre will work with both private

and public institutions. It will also encourage labour-management co-operation

to expand American capital investment in the African nations.’ The italics are

mine. Could anything be plainer?

Following a pattern previously set by the ICFTU, it has already started classes:

one for drivers and mechanics in Nigeria, one in tailoring in Kenya. Labour

scholarships are being offered to Africans who want to study trade unionism in of

all places-Austria, ostensibly by the Austrian unions. Elsewhere, labour,

organised into political parties of which the British Labour Party is a leading and

typical example, has shown a similar aptitude for encouraging ‘Labour-

management co-operation to expand . . . capital investment in African nations.'

But as the struggle sharpens, even these measures of neo-colonialism are

proving too mild. So Africa, Asia and Latin America have begun to experience a

round of coups d'etat or would-be coups, together with a series of political

assassinations which have destroyed in their political primes some of the newly

emerging nations best leaders. To ensure success in these endeavours, the

imperialists have made widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural

weapons in the form of intrigues, manoeuvres and slander campaigns.

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must

now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various

kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military

bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of

one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land

concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect

customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from

customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to

provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that

Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries

be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to

listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red

Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the

developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still

illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and

thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild

West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade

union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the

villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the

CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of

those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together

with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses

to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the

news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number

of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial

preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign

correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-

national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation

propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China,

Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own

independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is

armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as

rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is

evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide

of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these

are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing

countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags.

‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a

temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree.

Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological

plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press

and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were

held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and

Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency

(USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps

and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of

U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work.

Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A.

were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute

U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any

independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-

ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western

countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to

discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of

combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on

ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda

offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It

was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the

public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective

countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the

intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States

‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-

Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency

(USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American,

Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the

appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa,

MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial

upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating

collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same

peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu

of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book

One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation

‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists

the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in

MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land

forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap

this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that

MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the

ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace

Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-

in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in

Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former

head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked

together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence

agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction

to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that,

although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its

members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and

expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of

subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West

countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the

United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on

earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this

vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130

million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications

abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S.

Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea,

Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on

American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and

national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to

discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which

are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is

usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000

projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the

U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the

Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces

intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of

national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It

spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and

magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on

developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for

instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include

a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate

information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources

of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up

USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville)

originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information

centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing

these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton

University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril

Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties

between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald

M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director

for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern

European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the

U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each

country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government,

about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises

networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while

recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute

U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to

defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and

economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to

influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It

has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia.

Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces

in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak

Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems

no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the

suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace

Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the

Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky

writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence

organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big

Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up

its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For

example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan

known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs

to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also

helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time.

Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in

despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible

resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own

major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past.

This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout

history.

The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a tangle of

inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright subversion and counter-

revolution the like of which has been repeated to some degree in every

subsequent revolution to date.

The Russian Revolution during the period of Intervention, 1917 to 1922,

appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one time was forced

to pull out of its existing bases, lock stock and barrel, and make the

unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. Imperialist white mercenaries who

dropped so confidently out of the skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from

Ascension Island thought that their job would be ‘duck soup’. Yet, till now, the

nationalist forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward.

They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when.

Asia provides a further example of the strength of a people’s will to determine

their own future. In South Vietnam ‘special warfare’ is being fought to hold back

the tide of revolutionary change. ‘Special warfare’ is a concept of General

Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the creed of John Foster Dulles: let

Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the technique is for the foreign power to supply the

money, aircraft, military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical

command from a General Staff down to officer ‘advisers’, while the troops of the

puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of bombing raids

and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, the people of both North

and South Vietnam are proving to be unconquerable.

In other parts of Asia, in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and now the Philippines,

Thailand and Burma, the peoples of ex-colonial countries have stood firm and are

winning battles against the allegedly superior imperialist enemy. In Latin

America, despite ‘final’ punitive expeditions, the growing armed insurrections in

Colombia, Venezuala and other countries continue to consolidate gains.

In Africa, we in Ghana have withstood all efforts by imperialism and its agents;

Tanzania has nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have Brazzaville, Uganda and

Kenya. The struggle rages back and forth. The surging popular forces may still be

hampered by colonialist legacies, but nonetheless they advance inexorably.

All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism is not a sign of

imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability

to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer

afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it

now seeks to take away.

This means that neo-colonialism can and will be defeated. How can this be

done?

Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the

ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history — divide

and rule.

Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying neo-

colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union government on the

much divided continent of Africa. Along with that, a strengthening of the Afro-

Asian Solidarity Organisation and the spirit of Bandung is already under way. To

it, we must seek the adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin

American brothers.

Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and at every

possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector of the world.

Finally, we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too few yet

growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the

imperialist world itself.

To carry out such a political programme, we must all back it with national

plans designed to strengthen ourselves as independent nations. An external

condition for such independent development is neutrality or political non-

alignment. This has been expressed in two conferences of Non-Aligned Nations

during the recent past, the last of which, in Cairo in 1964, clearly and inevitably

showed itself at one with the rising forcesof liberation and human dignity.

And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity

seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-

colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make,

maintain or break revolutions.

With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analysed in clear and simple

terms for the full mass understanding by the surging organisations of the African

peoples. The All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) has already made a

start in this direction, while the Pan-African Youth Movement, the women,

journalists, farmers and others are not far behind. Bolstered with ideological

clarity, these organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory

forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of

imperialism’s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said and done, it

is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, malnourished, blood-

covered fighter for independence who decides. And he invariably decides for

freedom.

 

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialismKwame Nkrumah 1965

ConclusionIN the Introduction I attempted to set out the dilemma now facing the world. The

conflict between rich and poor in the second half of the nineteenth century and

the first half of the twentieth, which was fought out between the rich and the poor

in the developed nations of the world ended in a compromise. Capitalism as a

system disappeared from large areas of the world, but where socialism was

established it was in its less developed rather than its more developed parts and,

in fact, the revolt against capitalism had its greatest successes in those areas

where early neo-colonialism had been most actively practised. In the industrially

more developed countries, capitalism, far from disappearing, became infinitely

stronger. This strength was only achieved by the sacrifice of two principles which

had inspired early capitalism, namely the subjugation of the working classes

within each individual country and the exclusion of the State from any say in the

control of capitalist enterprise.

By abandoning these two principles and substituting for them ‘welfare states’

based on high working-class living standards and on a State-regulated capitalism

at home, the developed countries succeeded in exporting their internal problem

and transferring the conflict between rich and poor from the national to the

international stage.

Marx had argued that the development of capitalism would produce a crisis

within each individual capitalist State because within each State the gap between

the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ would widen to a point where a conflict was

inevitable and that it would be the capitalists who would be defeated. The basis of

his argument is not invalidated by the fact that the conflict, which he had

predicted as a national one, did not everywhere take place on a national scale but

has been transferred instead to the world stage. World capitalism has postponed

its crisis but only at the cost of transforming it into an international crisis. The

danger is now not civil war within individual States provoked by intolerable

conditions within those States, but international war provoked ultimately by the

misery of the majority of mankind who daily grow poorer and poorer.

When Africa becomes economically free and politically united, the

monopolists will come face to face with their own working class in their own

countries, and a new struggle will arise within which the liquidation and collapse

of imperialism will be complete.

As this book has attempted to show, in the same way as the internal crisis of

capitalism within the developed world arose through the uncontrolled action of

national capital, so a greater crisis is being provoked today by similar

uncontrolled action of international capitalism in the developing parts of the

world. Before the problem can be solved it must at least be understood. It cannot

be resolved merely by pretending that neo-colonialism does not exist. It must be

realised that the methods at present employed to solve the problem of world

poverty are not likely to yield any result other than to extend the crisis.

Speaking in 1951, the then President of the United States, Mr Truman, said,

‘The only kind of war we seek is the good old fight against man’s ancient

enemies. . . poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy.’ Sentiments of a similar nature

have been re-echoed by all political leaders in the developed world but the stark

fact remains: whatever wars may have been won since 1951, none of them is the

war against poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy. However little other types of

war have been deliberately sought, they are the only ones which have been

waged. Nothing is gained by assuming that those who express such views are

insincere. The position of the leaders of the developed capitalist countries of the

world are, in relation to the great neo-colonialist international combines, very

similar to that which Lord Macaulay described as existing between the directors

of the East India Company and their agent, Warren Hastings, who, in the

eighteenth century, engaged in the wholesale plunder of India. Macaulay wrote:

‘The Directors, it is true, never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it.

Whoever examines their letters written at the time will find there are many just

and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of

political ethics. But each exultation is modified or nullified by a demand for

money. . . . We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these

dispatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, written 15,000 miles from the place

where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross

inconsistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once

manifest to their lieutenant in Calcutta.

‘... Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to disregard either the

moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his employers. Being forced to

disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they

would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would

be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees.'

Today the need both to maintain a welfare state, i.e. a parasite State at home,

and to support a huge and ever-growing burden of armament costs makes it

absolutely essential for developed capitalist countries to secure the maximum

return in profit from such parts of the international financial complex as they

control. However much private capitalism is exhorted to bring about rapid

development and a rising standard of living in the less developed areas of the

world, those who manipulate the system realise the inconsistency between doing

this and producing at the same time the funds necessary to maintain the sinews of

war and the welfare state at home. They know when it comes to the issue they

will be excused if they fail to provide for a world-wide rise in the standard of

living. They know they will never be forgiven it they betray the system and

produce a crisis at home which either destroys the affluent State or interferes with

its military preparedness.

Appeals to capitalism to work out a cure for the division of the world into rich

and poor are likely to have no better result than the appeals of the Directors of the

East India Company to Warren Hastings to ensure social justice in India. Faced

with a choice, capitalism, like Hastings, will come down on the side of

exploitation.

Is there then no method of avoiding the inevitable world conflict occasioned by

an international class war? To accept that world conflict is inevitable is to reject

any belief in co-existence or in the policy of non-alignment as practised at present

by many of the countries attempting to escape from neo-colonialism. A way out is

possible.

To start with, for the first time in human history the potential material

resources of the world are so great that there is no need for there to be rich and

poor. It is only the organisation to deploy these potential resources that is lacking.

Effective world pressure can force such a redeployment, but world pressure is not

exercised by appeals, however eloquent, or by arguments, however convincing. It

is only achieved by deeds. It is necessary to secure a world realignment so that

those who are at the moment the helpless victims of a system will be able in the

future to exert a counter pressure. Such counter pressures do not lead to war. On

the contrary, it is often their absence which constitutes the threat to peace.

A parallel can be drawn with the methods by which direct colonialism was

ended. No imperial power has ever granted independence to a colony unless the

forces were such that no other course was possible, and there are many instances

where independence was only achieved by a war of liberation, but there are many

other instances when no such war occurred. The very organisation of the forces of

independence within the colony was sufficient to convince the imperial power

that resistance to independence would be impossible or that the political and

economic consequences of a colonial war outweighed any advantage to be gained

by retaining the colony.

In the earlier chapters of this book I have set out the argument for African unity

and have explained how this unity would destroy neo-colonialism in Africa. In

later chapters I have explained how strong is the world position of those who

profit from neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, African unity is something which is

within the grasp of the African people. The foreign firms who exploit our

resources long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African

scale. By means of interlocking directorships, cross-shareholdings and other

devices, groups of apparently different companies have formed, in fact, one

enormous capitalist monopoly. The only effective way to challenge this economic

empire and to recover possession of our heritage, is for us also to act on a Pan-

African basis, through a Union Government.

No one would suggest that if all the peoples of Africa combined to establish

their unity their decision could be revoked by the forces of neo-colonialism. On

the contrary, faced with a new situation, those who practise neo-colonialism

would adjust themselves to this new balance of world forces in exactly the same

way as the capitalist world has in the past adjusted itself to any other change in

the balance of power.

The danger to world peace springs not from the action of those who seek to end

neo-colonialism but from the inaction of those who allow it to continue. To argue

that a third world war is not inevitable is one thing, to suppose that it can be

avoided by shutting our eyes to the development of a situation likely to produce it

is quite another matter.

If world war is not to occur it must be prevented by positive action. This

positive action is within the power of the peoples of those areas of the world

which now suffer under neocolonialism but it is only within their power if they

act at once, with resolution and in unity.